![\"affiche_2007.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/affiche_2007.jpg?resize=133%2C200\")
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It’s a hard time to be a fan of professional cycling – especially when Tour de France time comes around each July. Last year, we thrilled to Floyd Landis’ thrashing of the rest of the peleton after a disastrous day in the Alps, only to find out that he was blood doping in order to accomplish this amazing feat (I guess the “if it’s too good to be true” adage holds for cycling as well).<\/p>\n
This year, we watched Alexandre Vinokourov<\/a> (Team Astana) take a horrible fall and battle back into relevance with a fantastic time trial stage victory and a mountain stage victory before testing positive for blood doping and having he and his entire team yanked from the race. The next day Italian Christian Moreni<\/a> (Team Cofidis) tested positive and was arrested and hauled to jail by French authorities. Today, Tour leader (wearer of the yellow jersey) Michael Rasmussen<\/a> (Team Rabobank) was taken out of contention by his team (along with the rest of the team) for lying about his whereabouts while missing three random drug tests during the lead-up to the Tour.<\/p>\n The Vinokourov affair was the most heartbreaking to me. The guy just seemed to have so much heart, and he rode his guts out despite his injuries (over sixty stitches to his knees and elbow) and had tremendous fan support along the way. Rasmussen had a dark cloud over him from the get go, and was even booed at the start line of today’s stage in Gourette.<\/p>\n The good news (so far) is that the remaining top three riders (Alberto Contador<\/a>, Cadel Evans<\/a> and Levi Leipheimer<\/a>) seem to be squeaky clean and have raced very well up to this point, and two of them race for the USA’s Team Discovery Channel<\/a>. We’ll see…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s a hard time to be a fan of professional cycling – especially when Tour de France time comes around each July. Last year, we thrilled to Floyd Landis’ thrashing of the rest of the peleton after a disastrous day in the Alps, only to find out that he was blood doping in order to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[3660],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-viola"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-6p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1060,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/08\/02\/cycling-music\/","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":0},"title":"cycling = music?","author":"Charles Noble","date":"August 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I was reading a great collection of diary entries and columns by the great Bob \"Bobke\" Roll, who had a career racing both road bikes and mountain bikes in the 80's to the early 90's.\u00c2\u00a0 He was also a training partner for a young upstart Lance Armstrong as he made\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "cycling"","block_context":{"text":"cycling","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/cycling\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4572,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/04\/30\/team-in-training\/","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":1},"title":"training to run against cancer","author":"Charles Noble","date":"April 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"If you look to the right sidebar, you'll see a donation button for Team in Training, which is an organization which raises money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society by training teams of runners and cyclists for major full and half marathon events and cycling centuries around the country. My\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "cello"","block_context":{"text":"cello","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/instruments\/cello\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/IMG_1742-400x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2847,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/11\/bon-voyage-to-david-stabler\/","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":2},"title":"bon voyage to david stabler","author":"Charles Noble","date":"July 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's all send out some serious \"Allez, allez!\" vibes to the Oregonian's classical music critic David Stabler, as he rides the Seattle to Portland Classic today - and he's doing it on a team that is doing the entire ride in one day! 8-O \u00c2\u00a0 That's some serious average speed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "cycling"","block_context":{"text":"cycling","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/cycling\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"David Stabler riding up Larch Mountain - Photo: Martin Stabler","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/07\/large_Stabler.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":21984,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2021\/09\/26\/happy-sunday\/","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":3},"title":"happy sunday!","author":"Charles Noble","date":"September 26, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"View from the office this morning. And a huge congratulations to Julian Alaphilippe on his second consecutive World Championship Road Race win!","rel":"","context":"In "cycling"","block_context":{"text":"cycling","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/cycling\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_4735.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_4735.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_4735.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_4735.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/IMG_4735.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6776,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/08\/23\/mt-hood-from-near-orient-oregon\/","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":4},"title":"mt. hood from near orient, oregon","author":"Charles Noble","date":"August 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In "cycling"","block_context":{"text":"cycling","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/cycling\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/6066886764_47b752dc91_b-599x449.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/6066886764_47b752dc91_b-599x449.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/6066886764_47b752dc91_b-599x449.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5797,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/13\/worst-day-of-the-year-ride-2011\/","url_meta":{"origin":397,"position":5},"title":"worst day of the year ride 2011","author":"Charles Noble","date":"February 13, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are some photos from the ride that Heather and I did this morning - lots of fun, and no rain!!","rel":"","context":"In "cycling"","block_context":{"text":"cycling","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/cycling\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}